gottiplagwikiaorg_de-20200213-history
Plagiarism before being published
Papers of HW Gottinger that were found to involve plagiarism before being published #In the mid-1980s, Gottinger had a brief consultancy contract with EIPA, the European Institute of Public Administration. The paper he prepared for the project was on the subject of ‘Market failures versus government failures’. A student hired by EIPA as an editorial assistant discovered that the paper plagiarized Wolf (1979). Gottinger was fired by EIPA and the story was kept quiet. The paper was apparently never published. Plagiarised Wolf, C., 1979. A theory of nonmarket failure: framework for implementation analysis. Journal of Law and Economics'' 22, 107-139 Luc Soete a contact at EIPA. #In ~1991, while based at Nuffield College, HWG submitted a paper to the journal, ''Regional Science and Urban Economics. The Editor (Konrad Stahl) noted that the manuscript looked ‘odd’, consisting of a large amount of ‘cut and paste’ material. However, after discussing it with Dietmar Harhoff, he decided to send it to two referees. One of these was Zvi Griliches, who passed it to his former PhD student, Adam Jaffe, to referee. Jaffe immediately recognized that the paper consisted almost entirely of Xeroxed parts from his 1985 PhD thesis (whole paragraphs, tables, even an entire Fortran programme), with just a few linking sections (poorly phrased and in a different typeface). He discussed this with Griliches and with Rebecca Henderson. He then informed the Editor and indeed discussed with him the possibility bringing a legal case against Gottinger (before eventually deciding it was not worth pursuing). At around the same time, Stahl found out that the same paper had been submitted by Gottinger to the journal Empirical Economics. He informed the Editor of Empirical Economics about this. As a result, one journal rejected the paper for this double submission, while the other rejected it for plagiarism. story has been independently confirmed by Stahl, Jaffe, Harhoff and Henderson. #In July 1995, the Economics Research Library at the University of Minnesota received copies of eight working papers from the Center for Economic Studies (CES) at the University of Munich. These were added to the library, along with working papers from a range of other institutions around the world. According to the website http://www.econ.umn.edu/~econlib/gfrjul95.html , CES Working Paper 78 was “Gottinger, Hans W. Dynamic portfolio choice and stochastic survival”. However, a check on the CES Website (see http://www.cesifo-group.de/portal/page/portal/ifoHome/b-publ/b3publwp/_WP_LIST?p_year=1995 ) shows that WP 78 was actually “Roy, Santanu: Theory of Dynamic Portfolio Choice for Survival Under Uncertainty”. (The latter was eventually published in Mathematical Social Sciences 30 (1995), 171-194. Roy was based at the Econometric Institute, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, when he submitted his paper to MSS in March 1993.) At first sight, this seemed to suggest that HWG had somehow managed to intercept the package of papers sent by CES to Minnesota and to substitute his version of the paper (with its slightly different title) for the Roy paper that he had plagiarised. (HWG’s paper is also listed on the SSRN website – see http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6069 .) However, what appears to have taken place is that Gottinger (using his IIEEM address in Bad Waldsee, Germany) first submitted his paper to CES, who accepted it as WP 78 and sent it off to Minnesota in July 1995. Sometime over the next few months, someone noticed that this plagiarised Roy’s paper (perhaps when the latter finally appeared in MSS), so CES decided to replace the Gottinger version with the original Roy version. CES then sent the replacement WP 78 to the Minnesota Economics Research Library in January 1996 (see http://www.econ.umn.edu/~econlib/gfrjan96.html ). Inside the cover of the latter, they inserted the following statement: “This paper has actually appeared in this discussion paper series with the title ‘Dynamic Portfolio Choice and Stochastic Survival’ authored by Hans W. Gottinger from International Institute for Environmental Economics and Management, Bad Waldsee. We were embarrassed to learn that Gottinger’s paper was a plagiarism. The author explained that the situation arose due to an illness and he extended his apologies. Recipients of Gottinger’s paper are asked to destroy that copy and replace it with this version.” Note that at that time HWG was an Advisory Editor to MSS so he may have been sent the Roy paper to referee in 1993. Alternatively, he may have instead plagiarised Roy’s 1991 PhD dissertation, ‘On Stochastic Dynamic Economics’, from Cornell University. At present, we do not have a copy of Gottinger’s paper to see whether it is closer to one or other of these two possible sources. Wendy Williamson, Librarian, Economics Research Library, University of Minnesota. Have approached Director of CES at the time for confirmation. #Gottinger, H.W., 1998. Game Dynamics, Fictitious Play and Bounded Rationality. Submitted to Mathematics of Operations Research (MOR). Plagiarised Chapter 2 in Cowan, S.G., 1992. Dynamical Systems Arising From Game Theory. PhD dissertation, UC Berkeley (see http://math.berkeley.edu/index.php?module=mathalumman&MATHALUM_MAN_op=sView&MATHALUM_id=231 ). [Plagiarism identified by the referee to whom the paper was sent, Josef Hofbauer. He happened to have obtained a copy of the dissertation from Cowan’s supervisor, Morris Hirsch. Hofbauer notified the Mathematics of Operations Research editor who has sent him the paper to review, Dov Monderer. The plagiarism was subsequently confirmed by Cowan and Hirsch. Monderer asked Gottinger for an explanation, but was told by his secretary that he was in hospital and unavailable. This information comes from Josef Hofbauer (University of Vienna), and has been confirmed by Reinhard Neck (Klagenfurt University).] {Epilogue: Gottinger evidently felt this paper deserved to be published, so he simply added it to his CV, where he claims it was published in the ''Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control ''in 1998. However, a search of that journal reveals that this is not the case.}